


Three Bites

by pinehutch



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: F/F, Ineffable Wives | Female Aziraphale/Female Crowley (Good Omens), Inspired by Fanfiction, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Poetry, except it's a poem, honestly just read the fic it's better, renaissance poets don't @ me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:55:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25659340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinehutch/pseuds/pinehutch
Summary: Written for the one-year anniversary of the GO fanwork that is personally nearest and dearest to my heart.Aziraphale doesn’t need sonnets. She could write her own if she wanted to (though she’s more of a reader; her few attempts at poetry have been – middling.)Some unauthorized, middling attempts.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 23





	Three Bites

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mia_ugly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mia_ugly/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Soft (A Love Story in Three Bites)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20074090) by [mia_ugly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mia_ugly/pseuds/mia_ugly). 



**THREE BITES**

**1\. Peach _(I’m a sensitive bore)_**

And what's to dare?   
The day that rises pink  
and falls down hazy catches in her hair,  
shines toothsome on red lips. More sharp than fair,  
her, haloed, half-horned; more wine-stained than ink—   
But still indelible. Unquenched, I drink  
these _almost_ evenings, dine on atmosphere,  
stone fruit, and wanting.  
Peaches? Some affair  
of fearful, dying men who only think 

of fading. I have not faded, have only grown   
into this shape, rounded and familiar  
as well-trod paths through the late rose bushes,   
and safe, still safe. (Would my touch cast her down  
without return? Better to consider   
it impossible, and swallow, and hush.)

**2\. Plum _(I have read the right books / to interpret your looks)_**

(This is just to say:)  
_You were the best of it._

It? All. The endless rise and fall, the beginnings  
and the endings, the hundred billions and the two   
of a kind, each strange feeling,   
each awful charm.   


Time was, I would have burned this and _for_ this,  
and still I know the scent of secrets smouldering:   
your fingers are lit matches, darling, you cannot help   
but light me up. (Please, drag yourself across me.   


Strike.) Time is, and held between us it is soft.   
The general shape of things is of a spoon dripping damson preserves:   
an excess of sweetness and tartness on the tongue, and on a fulcrum.   
Let me offer it for sealing by your red wax mouth.   


**3\. Pear _(And we are swallowing panic / In the face of its force)_ **

Having heard what pears are not, a reply:   
they are made of the same stuff as roses,   
as are peaches, plums, tart berries (apples).   
Heaven-honeyed fruits, and golden. Treasured   
as all bright things, and tender: I bought three   
pears at market, four days past, have been   
waiting since my beginning to taste them.   
When I pressed my thumb into them, clumsy,

then they bruised. When I placed them on my tongue,  
they crumbled, burst, overflowed and quenched me.   
Orchards shot forth.   
(I love not only fruit,  
but olives, wine, smoke. The fire of your hair,  
your body wanting, and my body wanted,   
and the shapes of true things, and what’s chosen.)  


**Author's Note:**

> This is all fairly referential, including to "Soft," obviously, but also to: 
> 
> Joanna Newsom's ["Peach, Plum, Pear"](https://youtu.be/KcHjAUhtSrk) (in the titles of each section);  
> ["The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,"](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock) because I always appreciate Aziraphale-Prufrock intertextuality;  
> ["This Is Just To Say,"](https://poets.org/poem/just-say) because c'mon dude, don't hoard all the plums;  
> ["Study of Two Pears,"](http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/stevens-2pears.html) because if we're talking favourite White Guys of Modernism, mine is Stevens.


End file.
